Election News

The table defaults to all races seen as competitive in 2020, based on initial ratings by Sabato's Crystal Ball. As you pan/zoom on the map, the table will update to show all seats visible in the map area. To view all districts in a specific state, choose it in the drop-down menu below the seat counter.

Democrats gained 40 seats in the 2018 midterms, and now hold 235 seats to 198 for the Republicans. There are two vacancies in previously GOP-held seats: PA-12 and NC-9. There will be a special election in PA-12 on May 21, coinciding with the state's primary election. It is unclear when the North Carolina vacancy will be filled.

The House map arrives with three Starting Views. In addition to a blank map, there is the initial 2020 forecast from Sabato's Crystal Ball and a map that shows the most competitive races in 2018, based on margin of victory. Click or tap the images below for an interactive version of these.

Sabato's Crystal Ball

"Democrats start the cycle favored to hold the House majority, but a GOP presidential victory would open the door to Republicans restoring total control of Washington." Read their full analysis >>

Competitive 2018 Races

This map separates the 87* races decided by 10% or less in 2018. Those decided by less than 5% are shown as a tilt rating, while the elections with 5-10% margins are shown as a leans rating. The remainder are displayed as safe.

* North Carolina's 9th district is excluded. The Election Day vote gave the GOP nominee a victory margin of less than 1% (tilt Republican using this map's methodology). However, the election was not certified and the seat remains vacant.

A New Generation of Leadership from Pete for America on Vimeo.

Buttigieg is the two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He was first elected at age 29 in 2011. Now 37, he would be the youngest president in U.S. history were he to be successful in 2020. He is about 9 months younger than Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who announced her candidacy earlier this month.  

Forming an exploratory committee is a step short of a formal campaign launch, although that is highly likely to follow. He joins Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in this category.  This brings to 8 the total number of Democrats who have either announced a 2020 campaign or formed an exploratory committee.

Harris becomes the 5th Democrat to formally announce a 2020 run. Two of her Senate colleagues, Elizabeth Warren (MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY) have created exploratory committees, which basically means they are running but are saving the 'formal' launch for a later date. 

* Carol Moseley-Braun was the first, elected as U.S. Senator from Illinois in 1992.

Use -/+ buttons in the color palette area to display the ratings options you want to use. This can be changed at any time. As before, you can click a state repeatedly to change its rating. What's new here is that the rotation will only cycle through the ratings visible in the palette. So, if you only want to do a safe/toss-up map, there's no longer a need to cycle through all the other colors. 

Alternately, select a single rating in the palette by clicking or tapping it. A small check mark will appear. This is now the active color. Any states you change will switch to that rating. To change the active color, just select a different one. You can return to 'rotation mode' by clicking the active color again (the check mark will disappear).

3rd Party

A single rating is available for a 3rd party candidate. To use the 3rd party color, click or tap the 3P box in the color palette. A check mark will replace 3P, and it will function as any other rating, as described in the preceding paragraph. 3rd party is only available this way, it will not appear if you are rotating through the colors on a state.

Tilt Ratings

For those that want more precision in their forecast, we've added the tilt rating.  Tilt sits between 'Leans' and 'Tossup'. In our 2016 Very Close map, all states decided by 5% or less are shown as tossup. In the image below, we've assigned those states to the winning 2016 candidate using the tilt rating. Therefore, in the aggregate, the map reflects Trump's 306-232 win*. Click the image for an interactive version.

For the new features, all the references to 'state' in this article also apply to the split districts capability in Maine and Nebraska.

* Trump and Clinton won states (and congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska) yielding this total. There were seven faithless electors in the 2016 presidential election. History will therefore record the 2016 electoral vote as 304-227 for Trump. As the occurrence of faithless electors is essentially random - if they occur at all - we ignore them in all our 2020 forecast maps.

Marino was nominated in 2017 by President Trump to be his drug czar. However, he withdrew later that year after a report by The Washington Post and 60 Minutes that detailed how he helped pass a law making opioids more easily available. 

Marino introduced a constitutional amendment just last week to change House terms from two to four years. The press release from his office quoted him as follows: "As I’ve committed to since first coming to Congress, I will serve 12 years and then let new blood and ideas take the reins."  Marino has served eight years, he is leaving just weeks after indicating he would serve four more.  The private sector opportunity must have arisen quickly.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf will call a special election to fill Marino's seat. This is a very conservative district, and the seat will likely remain under Republican control.

The image below are the initial ratings from Sabato's Crystal Ball. You can read their analysis of the races here.

* These are safe GOP states in a presidential election. The competitiveness of these gubernatorial races is aided to some degree by the fact that they are occurring this year as opposed to next.

TONIGHT: @SenGillibrand stops by @colbertlateshow to announce that she is forming an exploratory committee to run for President of the United States! #LSSC pic.twitter.com/vPUpF1gs8z

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) January 15, 2019

Seems to be a reasonable baseline map based on 2016 and the midterms, but the political environment could be completely different by 2020 - if not sooner. We do note the toss-up states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. These were previously 'blue wall' states that Donald Trump flipped in 2016 on his way to victory. The margin in each of those states was under 1%. If the 2020 election is competitive, those states - as well as Minnesota - will go a long way to determining Trump's reelection prospects.